


Porah

by theorangewitch



Series: Angstober [25]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-14 11:57:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16492142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theorangewitch/pseuds/theorangewitch
Summary: The night Zipporah Basevi’s life fell apart her sister woke her up. Talya was leaning over her bed, her obsidian eyes wide and afraid. Zipporah had never seen Talya be afraid before.





	Porah

**Author's Note:**

> This represents Day 26 of Angstober - Separated by War. I was traveling on October 26th so I couldn't write it then. But it's written now! This also represents the final piece of Talya and Zipporah Basevi's story. If you want to read the other pieces, they're "An Extant Form of Life" for Day 7 of Angstober - Forgotten, and "XX - Judgement", for Days 14 and 15 - Revenge and Hear Our Prayer. 
> 
> As usual, the link to the full list of Angstober prompts is in the author's note of the first work in this series.

The night Zipporah Basevi’s life fell apart her sister woke her up. Talya was leaning over her bed, her obsidian eyes wide and afraid. Zipporah had never seen Talya be afraid before. 

“Something’s happening,” Talya whispered. “Look.”

Zipporah stared out the window. The night was dark, the tops of the trees casting black and looming silhouettes against the charcoal sky. She could feel the cold of the fall air pressing in through the window. That night the moon was covered by threatening clouds, but another source of light cracked through the darkness, this one warm and orange. It was fire. At the edge of their village, houses were burning. 

“We should get Mommy and Daddy,” Zipporah said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. 

“They’re downstairs,” Talya told her. “I heard them.”

When the girls arrived downstairs, their parents were in the kitchen. Their mother, Mira, was stuffing food and blankets into a giant sack. 

“Good,” their father, Tammuz, said. “I was just going to go and wake you. Go get your shoes on, we’re leaving.”

“Daddy, what’s happening?” Zipporah asked. 

“Strangers have come,” Mira replied. “They’re burning down the village.”

“Why?” Talya asked. 

“We don’t know,” Tammuz said. “Now go get your shoes on, girls. And grab anything you want to take with you. The strangers will be at our doorstep soon.”

As they sat in the quiet front hall, putting their shoes on, Talya said, “Why are you putting on your slippers, Porah? Put on some real shoes.”

“My real shoes are uncomfortable,” Zipporah whined. “They’re too small and they hurt my feet.”

“Your slippers will wear right through.”

Zipporah stuck out her tongue at her sister and then said, “How far are we even going? Hastra isn’t so far.” Hastra was the next village over from their home village of Kelev. 

“I don’t know,” Talya said. It seemed like none of the Basevi’s knew what was going on, and that was the scariest thing of all. 

It wasn’t until they were outside of their house, thunder rumbling across the sky and the fire growing ever closer to their doorstep, that Zipporah realized something. “Moosey!” she cried. “I left Moosey in my room.” Moosey was her favorite stuffed animal. 

“Porah, I’m sorry, but we really have to go,” Mira started, but then Tammuz shot her a look and said, “Run inside and grab him.”

Zipporah darted back through the door, slamming up the wooden stairs in her slippers. She snatched Moosey from off of her bed, then dashed back outside. She wasn’t gone more than a few moments, she couldn’t have been, but a few moments was enough, and when she got back outside one of the strangers was grabbing her father by his shirt collar and slamming him against the side of their house. The strangers’ torches cast strange, demonic shadows that danced over the ground.

“Daddy!” she cried at the same time that Talya cried, “Dad!” at the same time that Mira cried, “Tammuz!” 

Zipporah could barely understand what the strangers were saying, but it was angry. No, not just angry.  _ Mean _ . They were spitting in his face and their spears were pressed into his chest and arms.  _ What do they want? Who are they? Why don’t they leave us alone?  _

“Run!” Tammuz was shouting. “Mira, just take the girls and run!” 

“Let my husband go,” Mira begged. “Please. He hasn’t done anything. Just let him go.” The man who seemed to be their leader turned to her and laughed. He had his spear angled directly at Tammuz’s throat. He had only one eye. The other wasn’t covered by an eyepatch, but sat as a dark hole in his head. 

“No,” he snarled. 

In a whirlwind of movement, Mira grabbed Zipporah by the head and whipped the two of them around, burying Zipporah’s face in her thigh. Mira smelled like home, a home that Zipporah had a feeling she’d never see again. And then they were running. Mira held her daughters by the wrists, digging into Zipporah’s skin so hard that it hurt. Zipporah struggled to keep up on her tiny legs, so she was practically being dragged away from the house and into the forest beyond. As they disappeared into the trees, Zipporah dared to look back just once. There on the ground she saw Tammuz, lying dead in a pool of his own blood, his throat stabbed through. A few yards away lay the sack with their food and supplies, abandoned in the fear of the moment. 

The rain started to fall as they ran, hitting their heads in fat, icy drops. 

They didn’t dare stop until the rain stopped, until they were deep in the woods, far from Kelev. Far from any villages. But it was a hollow rest. They had no food or water or blankets, and the night was bitterly cold. When Zipporah saw the campfire flickering through the trees, her relief almost overwhelmed her fear and grief. And rage. And rage. 

Mira peered around a pine tree, and upon seeing whatever she saw, she called out, “Hello.”

Zipporah dared to peek. An elderly human woman with her head wrapped in a scarf sat there with a small boy, warming her hands against the heat of the fire. 

The woman looked up, inhaling sharply until she took in Mira’s features. “You’re running,” she said. 

Mira nodded. 

“Come closer. We’re running too.” 

“Come on, girls,” Mira said, beckoning them towards the fire. “I’m Mira,” she introduced herself. “These are my daughters. The blue one is Talya. The purple one is Zipporah.”

“I’m Salma,” the woman told her. “And this is my grandson, Barakat. We have fled the destruction of Hastra. Where are you from?”

“Kelev.”

Salma nodded. “Kelev. My son has been there many times on business. Our villages were neighbors.”

“And now they are nothing.”

“Now they are nothing,” Salma agreed. “Do you have food? We have a little extra.” She you’re off a chunk of bread and offered it to Mira, who distributed it between Talya and Zipporah. The bread felt so good in her stomach that she almost forgot about everything else that had happened. 

“Where are you going?” Mira asked. 

“South, to the coast. We have family there,” Salma said. “And you?”

Mira shook her head. “I don’t know. All of my family lived in Kelev.” 

“Go west, then. Follow the first road west you come upon once you get out of the forest. Along it I know of a Temple of Ioun. From what I hear, they will sometimes take in refugees.”

Mira nodded. “Thank you.”

That night, Zipporah and Talya slept on the cold, damp forest floor around the embers of Salma’s fire, wrapped in her blankets. Zipporah stared up through the dark shapes of the trees and into the silver forks of lightning that slithered across the sky. 

“Zipporah?” Talya whispered. The girls were huddled in close to one another for warmth.

“Yeah?” Zipporah whispered back. 

“I saw him die.” 

Those four words rattled Zipporah to her very core. 

“The man with one eye stabbed him in his throat. He was begging for his life.”

Zipporah didn’t know what to say. Thunder rumbled, distant and low. The humming of an angry god. The world around her was so dark. 

In the morning, they parted ways with Salma and Barakat and headed west as Salma had suggested. Mira held Talya’s hand and balanced Zipporah on her right hip as they trudged through the misting rain that had begun to fall in the wee hours of the morning. It was only another couple of days of foraging and sleeping in the cold and wet before they came upon the temple she’d spoken of. It was a humble structure of only one floor. Rain dripped off the awning and onto the steps. Mira approached the heavy oaken door and knocked. 

A half-elf woman with a third eye painted on her forehead answered, opening the door just a crack. Her face took on an ashen tone in the gray morning light. “No room,” she said.

“What?” Mira exclaimed. 

“No room,” the woman repeated. “We’ve gotten countless refugees in the past few weeks. I’m sorry, but we simply don’t have room for three more.”

Mira closed her eyes and said, “What about two more.”

The woman glanced from Mira to Talya to Zipporah and opened the door all the way so that she and Mira were standing chest to chest. “One more. We have room for one more.”

She couldn’t parse it at the time, but Zipporah would later recall the calculations that passed over her mother’s face, weighing her options,  _ Separate my two daughters from each other and one from me, but keep that one safe, or keep them both with me, knowing the possibility that we all might die from starvation or exposure? _

And then Mira wordlessly passed Zipporah into the woman’s hands. 

“MOMMY!” Zipporah shrieked, struggling against the woman’s grasp. “NO!”

“Zipporah!” Talya cried, diving in after her sister.

Mira yanked Talya back. “Porah, Porah, Taly I’m so sorry. My girls, my beautiful, brave girls, I’m so, so sorry. Porah, Porah, listen to me. You’ll be safe here, Zipporah, my girl, I’ll miss you so much. So, so much. But you have to stay, Taly, you have to let your sister  _ go _ , she’ll be  _ safe _ —“

But Talya had already wrenched her hand free from her mother’s grasp. She lunged for Zipporah again. This time the half-elf woman yanked her away, but Talya’s hand found purchase on her sister’s foot, and as the woman pulled Zipporah away, her flimsy slipper came off in Talya’s grasp.

“Talya, please,” Mira was pleading at the same time she was saying. “Goodbye, Zipporah, goodbye my girl, my sweet girl.”

And then the half-elf woman slammed the door of the temple. 


End file.
